


Nobody Asked You

by jellyryans (ryankellycc)



Series: break up my lonely [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Setting, Daichi POV, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, M/M, Male Friendship, Pre-Relationship, but canon divergence?, daichi is a worrier, second fic in series, set right before the manga starts, suga makes him worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28839603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryankellycc/pseuds/jellyryans
Summary: Suga's got a plan to deal with his crush on Tanaka, and Daichi is worried.
Relationships: Azumane Asahi & Sawamura Daichi & Sugawara Koushi, Sawamura Daichi & Sugawara Koushi, Sugawara Koushi/Tanaka Ryuunosuke
Series: break up my lonely [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700347
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	Nobody Asked You

**Author's Note:**

> Second fic in this series, also follows the first fic "Be You To Me" chronologically.

Life was full of painful truths. 

For example, it pained Daichi to admit that he and Asahi had more in common than people thought. 

According to his mom, he’d been a worrier since the day he was born. She said, even before he could talk, he’d calmly call for her through the baby monitor, and all she had to do to get him back to sleep was poke her head through the door and say his name. She loved telling those stories, like how he used to knock on their door at three in the morning to make sure they were okay or how he’d slept in the hallway, camped out in front of the nursery, when his baby brother and sister were brought home from the hospital. 

People loved to hear those kinds of stories, and his mom loved to share them. They laughed and laughed about Daichi’s restless nights and her impression of his distressed baby-face. They cooed over the kid who insisted on carrying the weight of the world on his tiny shoulders. 

If he was there, holding grocery bags while his mom chatted with their neighbor, his cheeks would burn fire-engine red. If they were around the dinner table, listening to a retelling of the telling, he would roll his eyes until he was sure they’d get stuck that way. That would show her, he’d thought. 

Show her _what_ , he couldn’t say. It’s not like she was wrong. He worried all the time.

He worried about the big, obvious things — his younger twin siblings, his parents, his schoolwork, his classmates, his time with a volleyball, his future — but he also worried about insignificant, silly things, like if his younger sister liked the way he did her hair or if he would have to wash the dinner dishes that night. 

He and Asahi weren’t entirely the same, however. While Asahi wore his worries like a brand new shirt with built-in lights and reflector strips, Daichi carried them in a heavy box that he held shut until he didn’t have to, when he was alone with the starlight shining through his window.

When he was honest with himself, he didn’t know who had it worse. 

Asahi threw up in the school bathroom and squealed like a baby rabbit. 

Daichi couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten more than three consecutive hours of sleep. He tossed and turned with the ebb and flow of his worries until his alarm screeched in his ear like a banshee from the bowels of hell and his bleary eyes signaled to his sleep-groggy brain that it was time to get the hell out of bed _or else_. 

They’d both adapted. Asahi accepted his very public displays of worry, and Daichi learned how to function with less than the recommended seven to ten hours of sleep. 

It worked for him, in elementary school and then at Izumitate Junior High. He assumed it would work for him at Karasuno. 

For the first year, it did. His grades were solid, he made friends and he made rivals, and his classwork wasn’t overwhelming. The volleyball club wasn’t as perfect as he’d dreamed it would be, but he knew what he was up against when he chose Karasuno, when he made that promise with Ikejiri. He wouldn’t lose hope. Coach Ukai wasn’t around anymore, but they had an energetic captain and a full roster. His dreams took on a fuller, more detailed shape. He wanted it to be _his_ team. He wanted to carry them to Nationals, to bring Karasuno to the stage where the team had inspired him that very first time. He wanted to work hard. He wanted to win. He wanted everyone else on the team to want the same.

Maybe that’s where it all had started to go wrong. He’d asked for so much without considering the consequences.

Through his second year, his comfy, cozy, totally normal-looking worries grew second, third, and fourth heads and turned into a tangled, writhing beast. 

Coach Ukai came back and was taken away again. They worked hard, so hard that they lost members. The third-years left to focus on university entrance exams. That might’ve been expected of them, but part of Daichi knew they’d lost heart long before their last practice. 

He finished the year as captain _and_ coach, but he wasn’t carrying his team; he was dragging it across the floor with one hand and using the other to slap cheap tape on each crack in the team’s delicate, crystalline structure. 

He failed, and they shattered.

Asahi left without looking back. Nishinoya didn’t think through a damn thing before plowing ahead and getting himself suspended. Tanaka stuck around but he was either a million miles away or hyper focused, and there was no in-between. Ennoshita, Kinoshita, and Narita tip-toed around him either like they were afraid he would revoke the invite to rejoin the team, if it could even be called that anymore, or go straight to biting their heads off. It unnerved Daichi to the point where he actually considered how sharp his teeth were, and how powerful his jaw. 

And then there was Suga. 

Sometimes, during a sleepless night, Daichi wondered what his life might’ve been like if they hadn’t been part of the same club. 

Would they have been friends? Would they have even met? 

Suga wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but he didn’t stand out. He didn’t get confessions or piles of chocolate or have his name scrawled with hearts on their classmates’ notebooks. His grades were near the top of their class, but he didn’t brag or have a fit when he dropped a place in the ranking. He laughed at jokes, shared his food, and let people borrow his class notes. He was a whole lot of good things — hardworking, reliable, fun, intelligent, considerate — lined with a severe lack of confidence and bubble-wrapped in ten layers of near-pathological overthinking. 

Daichi hadn’t seen him get close to anyone outside the team. He’d only noticed Suga during introductions, when Asahi had introduced himself like the pro-wrestler version of a trembling leaf, and Suga had snorted. Loudly. 

That was the thing about Sugawara Koushi. He was invisible right up until he decided that he was comfortable -- with you, or a group, or a place -- and then you forgot what your life was like before meeting him.

He chatted with, cheered on, impersonated, assaulted, and terrorized the people in his comfort zone, but his reserve was just as deafening. His observations turned into thoughts that crunched and ground against each other like heavy, metal gears, and sometimes his thoughts were so loud that Daichi caught himself wanting to be punched instead of having to listen.

When Suga stared at that broken mop in complete silence, Daichi had almost doubled over in agony.

That silence haunted him to the point of epiphany. He realized that the more time he spent with Suga, the less he felt like he actually _knew_ him. He was as predictable as he was unpredictable, as cautious as he was impetuous, as fearless as he was terrified, as thoughtful as he was cheeky.

Daichi worried. He worried about Suga. He worried for Suga. 

He wondered if he would’ve been able to sleep better if they’d never met. He also wondered if he would’ve been able to face the days ahead without him.

So, considering all of the things that made Suga who he was and how deeply his depths went unexplored, Daichi _really_ should’ve seen it coming. 

“I’m gonna ask Tanaka to be my boyfriend.”

Instead, Daichi choked in surprise. The classmates in their peripherie jumped in alarm, and the palm of Suga’s hand came down on Daichi’s back hard enough to make him cough. 

He couldn’t say a word, even if he hadn’t been hacking up a lung. Suga’s crush on a guy didn’t bother him, but the idea of Suga putting himself out there, and dragging Tanaka along for the ride, certainly did. They were still in high school; confessing to another guy wasn’t something you just _did_. No matter who you were, there would be consequences. Someone would get hurt.

A chill crept its way up his spine. Another slap was on its way. “I’m okay,” he rasped, shying away from where he imagined Suga’s raised hand to be. “Seriously, no more.”

“Good,” Suga said. “We wouldn’t make it to Nationals if our captain choked to death on his own spit. I can see the story now: Sawamura-kun, a sweet young man taken in the prime of his life. Conveniently, right before his quiz on acid-base titrations.” 

“You’re really making me want to hit you.”

Suga raised his brows. A challenge. 

No one hit Suga, and no one knew why. Considering how often Suga was slapping someone around, it was an absurd rule, but Daichi wasn’t going to be the one to break it. The last thing anyone needed was a Sugawara-family curse. 

“You’re really making me _think_ about hitting you,” he grumbled half-heartedly. 

“While you’re doin’ that, can you also think about what I said?”

Not even the potential horror of meeting one of Suga’s devious ancestors could keep the words from tumbling over one another in Daichi’s head.

Even if he forgot about everything else, the fact remained that Tanaka’s dilated pupils only wandered beyond the glossy sheen of Kiyoko’s hair and the outline of her shoulders in her practice shirt when there was a ball in the air. 

What could he do when his best friend’s chance of happiness was small enough to crush under his shoe?

Suddenly, like an annoying phone notification he couldn’t deactivate, Daichi heard his dad’s voice in the back of his head. 

A few years ago, his aunt was diagnosed with cancer, and his mom couldn’t stop crying. Daichi heard her through the walls, and he spent most of those nights in the kitchen, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes until he saw stars and cursing every bone in his helpless, dumb kid-body. 

On one of those nights, his dad found him muttering to himself and held him tight. He’d patted the back of Daichi’s head and said that sometimes the only way to help someone you love was just to be there, no matter how ugly or sad or scary things got. 

Daichi sucked in a breath. He could do that for Suga. “So you’re going to confess?” 

“Not exactly.” 

“Huh?”

“I have a plan.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have a plan.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Suga’s irises sparkled with brassy flecks of mischief, shades of hazel and solid gold focus. “Nope.” 

Of course he had a plan. Daichi felt as nauseous as he did stupid for thinking that Suga _wouldn’t_. “Am I going to like it?”

“I dunno,” Suga said. He leaned into Daichi’s space the way he did when he burned with curiosity but was too shy to say what was on his mind. 

Daichi sighed in defeat. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m gonna ask Tanaka to be my _fake_ boyfriend.” 

In Suga’s head, a fake relationship probably made perfect sense. He was good at finding creative workarounds for the team when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. However, this wasn’t a set of hand signals or a rotation switch-up. He was risking way more than a point on the scoreboard. Daichi’s cortisol levels spiked, and a bead of sweat dripped down his back. “You’re not some protagonist in a shoujo manga, Suga. You know that, right?”

“We are all protagonists in our own stories,” he said matter-of-factly. 

Daichi fought to keep his expression neutral. It was the hardest thing he’d done all week. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“I might’ve had an inkling,” Suga said with a shrug, “and don’t knock it until you’ve heard it.”

“Fine.” Daichi said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Let’s start with how exactly you’re going to convince our junior to be your fake boyfriend?”

“You’re going to help me.”

“No.”

“I said, you’re going to help me.”

“N-no, I _heard_ you,” Daichi sputtered. “You’re not pulling me into this.”

“Please?”

“No.”

Suga looked at him, holding his gaze until his eyelashes fluttered closed. His presence seemed to flicker with the heaving of his chest as he inhaled and exhaled, like he couldn’t stay in his physical body any longer, or like he’d rather disappear into nothingness than have to bear another single moment of existence. 

Daichi blinked, and the flicker was gone. Suga’s expression was blank. His lips twisted into a wry smile. “Nobody asked you anyway.”

That was the other thing about Sugawara Koushi. He cared too much about everyone else’s comfort to let his disappointment linger. Daichi only ever caught the blurred edges, and he knew instinctively that he’d never be able to withstand the full force of it. He was going to cave, like he always did. 

“You literally just asked me,” Daichi said, teasing.

Suga blinked in surprise. “Eh?”

“You just asked me to help you.”

“Did not!”

“Then what are we talking about?”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to do anything.”

Daichi hated how relieved he was that Suga hadn’t allowed himself to disappear. “Just start talking before I change my mind.”

“Right!” Daichi steeled himself for the oncoming storm. “I’m gonna tell Tanaka you think you might be gay, so he and I should pretend to date to make you feel more comfortable with it.”

_Should’ve known better_ was a running theme for their conversation, apparently. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Daichi said flatly.

“You wouldn’t have to do anything,” Suga added, ignoring him. “There’s no pressure.”

“No pressure?” Daichi willed himself to unclench his jaw. “Since when was this about me?”

“Since you said you’d help.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Suga said. “You wouldn’t have let me say anything if you weren’t. And it’s true, isn’t it? Are you really a hundred percent sure you’re straight?” 

Daichi blinked. He hoped, mostly in vain, that Suga wouldn’t notice his hands trembling at his sides. “I don’t have time to think about dating or, er, _that_.” 

“I know,” Suga said, downcast. “You’re a solid guy, Sawamura-kun,” he poked Daichi gently in the gut, “you shouldn’t worry about not being strong enough to love someone.”

“That’s _not_... What?” The lump in Daichi’s throat threatened to choke him.

“Do you remember the way Tashiro-senpai smiled?”

Tashiro-senpai’s grin had filled the entirety of whatever room they were in, whether it was the dirty club room or the second gym or the alley behind Sakanoshita. There were nights when Daichi woke in a panic thinking about their former captain’s dimples. He’d taken some very, _very_ cold showers. “Anyone would remember,” he muttered. 

“I’m not sayin’ you have to figure everything out,” Suga said. “And I know it’s extra shitty of me to ask when Asahi’s… When we’re not even sure we’ll have the chance to play— ”

He cut Suga off before he took them down that path. They didn’t have time, and Daichi didn’t have the energy to put them both back together. “Do you really like him?” 

Suga nodded. 

“Okay, but this fake boyfriend plan seems crazy.”

“I don’t know what else to do.”

Daichi swallowed. “You sure you can’t just confess?”

Suga’s voice sliced through the air like a freshly-sharpened blade. “Do you really think he’d return my feelings?” 

His mind was made up and he knew exactly what he was getting into, but neither of those truths assuaged Daichi’s new and horrifying worry that his best friend was about to do something incredibly stupid. He opened his mouth, but Suga cut him off. “I just want to know what it would feel like to be with him, even if it’s fake, even if it’s just for a week, or a day, or an hour.”

If Daichi hadn’t known for a fact that Suga went home to an empty apartment, and if he hadn’t felt Suga tremble as he let Daichi cry on his shoulder after Asahi stormed out of the club room, and if he didn’t care about Suga enough to know that he might actually _need_ this as much as he wanted it, he might’ve fought harder to talk him out of it. He would rally, for Suga.

“This won’t affect the team, right?”

“Absolutely not,” Suga said. “We’re going to Nationals, stupid.”

He said it with unwavering confidence, like he’d already time-traveled to and from the tournament where their banner hung from the stands, like he knew for a fact Asahi would come back and Nishinoya would return from his suspension without a giant, Asahi-sized chip on his shoulder, like he was certain the incoming first years would be exactly what they needed. 

None of that was possible, but Daichi chose to believe in him. It was easier than facing the alternative. “Is this going to be totally embarrassing?” 

“Nah. You know Tanaka’s not gonna broadcast your business all over the school.”

He did know. Tanaka had come into their lives just the year before, but it was long enough to figure out that he was a good guy rolled up in a rowdy wrapper. “He already has plenty of things to scream about as it is.”

“C’mon Daichi,” Suga whined, nudging him. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Oh yes I would,” Daichi said quickly. “If I had a hundred yen for every time I got a volume complaint, I’d be able to take the entire team out for dinner at least once a week.”

Suga pushed him harder, and Daichi feigned injury, which prompted Suga to prod at him again, knocking him into the group of students gathered around the desks next to them. Daichi was apologizing when Suga said, quietly, “I wouldn’t have him any other way.”

He glanced over his shoulder just in time to catch Suga’s smile. For the first time in a long while, it wasn’t frayed at the edges.

Their teacher cleared his throat in front of the class, and that was the end of it. 

Or was it the beginning? 

Their future was uncertain, and he didn’t need that much sleep anyway. He could only hope these shiny, new Suga-related worries would play nicely with the familiar, established ones.

**Author's Note:**

> me?? finally posting again?? no one is more surprised than me. i'm still not at the point where i feel comfortable dusting off my social media accounts (tumblr, discord, etc) BUT i love you all and thank you for reading. 
> 
> third and final fic will be a multi-chapter Tanaka POV, the fake dating begins....


End file.
